When Gareth Barry knocks Ryan Giggs off top spot on the list of all-time Premier League appearances, you can bet there’ll be plenty of knockers.

“Giggs played all his games for Manchester United, making it a ­greater achievement,” they’ll tell you.

And they’ll be speaking absolute cobblers.

Gareth has held his own for two decades in a league that does not carry passengers – and certainly not for ­630-plus games.

That’s a special breed of player and I’ll be so proud of my old mate if he can get those five games under his belt that will take him past Giggs’s mark of 632.

What Giggs achieved was incredible.

But, despite what the naysayers will claim, Aston Villa were ­competitive in the Premier League and playing in Europe when Gareth was there.

Ryan Giggs is the current holder of the Premier League appearance record (Image: Mirrorpix)

Manchester City were ­spending big money, yet he was still integral to everything they were doing. And, at Everton, he has been a big, experienced leader in a dressing room with plenty of youngsters.

It’s hard to believe we’re talking here about the young lad with whom I shared a dressing room at Villa ­20-odd years ago.

My memories are of Gaz being a little shy around the place back then and you did wonder whether or not he would survive in the shark tank that is a football dressing room.

There are always plenty of senior players jockeying for position and you have to be quite politically savvy and thick-skinned, as well as a talented player, to have any kind of longevity.

You have to be able to deal with all sorts of characters – managers, coaches.

But he got his head down, let his talent do the talking and managed to do it with the same sort of ruthless professionalism you’d get with a Giggs, Paul Scholes, the Nevilles or David Beckham.

He is one of those guys you very rarely notice, but he’s always there.

Barry in action for Aston Villa

And he has always turned up for internationals when selected at all the age groups and in the seniors.

He is a really nice lad, completely unaffected by the trappings that came with football and he has a lovely family as well.

I went up and saw him at Finch Farm last season and he breezed in with the same deferential air that I remember, but with the cache and experience of being a ­senior international footballer.

The accolade couldn’t go to a nicer guy and the fact I can call him a mate thrills me.

What will be interesting to see when Gareth eventually retires from the game is what path he will take next.

I’m not sure he is the sort who will want to go into television and he doesn’t have the nastiness you need for ­management, not like Sam Allardyce, Tony Pulis, Pep Guardiola, Jose ­Mourinho or Antonio Conte.

What I know for sure is that he could have a massive impact as a coach, in particular in and around the England set-up at St George’s Park.

Barry in action against Crystal Palace last season (Image: Ian Walton/Getty)

I stayed in the same hotel as the Germans in Sochi at the Confederations Cup and Oliver Bierhoff was there as general manager of Team Germany.

Gaz would be good in a position like that with England – people know who he is and he gets a lot of respect.

He has played under managers with a lot of different styles and ­philosophies, he’s a very intelligent lad in the way Gareth Southgate is,but perhaps he is not as good a talker yet.

That’s for the future, though, and now he stands on the brink of a ­wonderful achievement.

One day, it will make me very happy to say to my grandkids that I’m friends with the guy who has played more Premier League games than anyone.